Vatican City, May 1, 2010 / 19:01 pm
Just over a month after the Catechism was made available in Chinese on the Vatican's website, the Holy See has now released a Chinese version of the Code of Canon Law. The updates accompany the news of a rising Catholic population in Asia.
The Holy See offers portals to its homepage in eight languages, of which Chinese is the only one that does not use the Roman alphabet.
Following the January's publication of the Bible in Chinese characters and the March release of the Catholic Catechism, L'Osservatore Romano noted on Friday that the entirety of the Code of Canon Law has just been added. Translations of documents from the Second Vatican Council should also be forthcoming, according to a statement from the Vatican in March.
News of the updates to the website come during the same week that the Vatican reported the number of Asian Catholics as increasing at a rate of over 15 percent between 2000 and 2008. The Statistical Yearbook of the Church from the Vatican Publishing House also reported a nearly 24 percent rise in the number of priests in Asia.